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In the days when ‘musical’ was a code word for male homosexuality, a man's relationship with music could be as revealing and compromising as the biomechanics of his sexual acts. In dealing with questions of cultural identity, this chapter considers why the AIDS epidemic has apparently spawned films that have an affinity with the musical. It examines the relationship between the notion of a specifically gay ‘lifestyle’ and a particular set of musical tastes and cultural preferences (grand opera, Broadway/Hollywood musicals, disco). It also looks at camp culture as both a subcultural aesthetic...

In the days when ‘musical’ was a code word for male homosexuality, a man's relationship with music could be as revealing and compromising as the biomechanics of his sexual acts. In dealing with questions of cultural identity, this chapter considers why the AIDS epidemic has apparently spawned films that have an affinity with the musical. It examines the relationship between the notion of a specifically gay ‘lifestyle’ and a particular set of musical tastes and cultural preferences (grand opera, Broadway/Hollywood musicals, disco). It also looks at camp culture as both a subcultural aesthetic and as a lexicon of signs with which post-classical films such as Jeffrey (1995), Beautiful Thing (1995) and In and Out (1997) have represented gay lifestyles. In such films, the chapter argues that disco also stands in for the unfilmable – gay sex.